And The Award Goes To… #3 (Best First and Last Lines)

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OK, I’m going to pick up where I left off last time, so if you’re unfamiliar with this string of posts, please click here and here to catch up 🙂 Enjoy! And, as always, feel free to chip in with your own ideas in the comments section…

I’ve only proposed a few, as I could play this game forever! Do you have any favourite opening or closing lines?

Best First Lines

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.” – A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” – 1984 by George Orwell

“If this typewriter can’t do it, then fuck it, it can’t be done.” – Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins

“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.” – Murphy by Samuel Beckett

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.” – The Crow Road by Iain Banks

Best Last Lines

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Are there any questions?” The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

“Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is.” – Continental Drift by Russell Banks

“I never saw any of them again, except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them.” – The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

“This is not the scene I dreamed of. Like much else nowadays I leave it feeling stupid, like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere.” Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee

“It was the nightmare of real things, the fallen wonder of the world.” – The Names by Don DeLillo

“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” – The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

You could do worst lines too! Charles Bukowski’s Post Office (almost) ends, after general misery and a suicidal knife to the throat, ‘In the morning it was morning and I was still alive’ – which is a good closing line! But then…: ‘And then ‘I thought I’d write a novel about it. So I did’ Ugh.

It’s so kind of you to notice, Dan, thank you for asking… I’ve really not been well at all, got to go back into hospital for surgery at some point soon, I’m just waiting on a date. I didn’t realise I’d gone so long without posting – I’ll have to put my thinking cap on today for a new post 🙂 xx